The case of the Molniya 3-36 RB

From: Harro.Zimmer (Harro.Zimmer@t-online.de)
Date: Thu Jun 29 2000 - 13:49:38 PDT

  • Next message: Igor Lissov: "Re: Four new objects"

    1969-094B (#20339) Molniya 3-36 RB 2
    
    SpaceCom has evidently problems with this object. As Alan already mentioned 
    yesterday SpaceCom had predicting the decay for June 29, 09:56 UTC +/- 01 day
    but it had also flagged its latest Decay prediction message als FINAL REPORT
    and the OIG ELSETs shows the header "Decayed 200/06/27".
    At this time we see frequently fresh ELSETs for this object, some are very 
    strange :          Epoch             ndot          Mean motion
                       000177.0017...    0.9033...      7.3573....
                       000179.2536...    0.1985...      8.6948....
                       000179.7342...    0.4608...     14.2541....
                       000180.5870...    0.5363...     10.0868....
                       000180.9413...   -0.00000025     9.9876....
                       000181.2500...    0.1438...      9.8928....
                       000181.5989...    0.9110...     11.4742....
                       000181.6857...    0.7990...     11.6321....
                       000181.7328...    0.0941...     11.6589....
    
    A part of an explanation could be the possibility that the ELSETs represent
    two (or three) different objects. In the past we have a few well documented cases 
    of catastrophic breakups of the Molniya rocket bodies near the last perigees
    with a rapid decay of one piece and an uplift of the other.
    My rough analysis shows the possible "explosive event" on
                June 27, 14:40 UTC  +/- 100 minutes
    MPM delivers for the decay of "piece 1" 
                27 June, 19:57 UTC +/- 90 minutes.
    I will follow the problem a little bit more in detail....
    
    Harro
    
    Harro.Zimmer@t-online.de
    Berlin, Germany   
    
    -----------------------------------------------------------------
    Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe'
    in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org
    http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jun 29 2000 - 13:50:02 PDT